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Mishakal
Mishakal, the Goddess of Life, is a neutral good Old God of Astera and one of its chief and most powerful deities. As her domain is life itself, it falls to her not only to bring and nurture new life into the world, but to administer proper death to all things at their appointed time. In the Era of Scars, her devotees are scattered across the world, concentrated primarily in the kingdom of Davos; however, all races have worshipped her at one point or another in their long history. Her symbol is the blue infinity, in recognition of her power over the eternal cycle of life and death. She is allied with Bahamut and Oghma, her fellow Old Gods, and is closely associated with the New Gods Yondalla, Silvanus, and Pelor, whose realms are emergent from her own. Mishakal's presence can be felt in the Feywild, the verdant parallel dimension to the Material Plane where fey creatures hold court. Her mortal enemy is Orcus, the Demon Lord of the Undead. Description To most of her priesthood, like almost all deities, Mishakal is simply a voice, thoughts, or emotions that course through them when they call upon her for aid. It is said that she can take on the form of any living creature that has ever graced the world: more superstitious worshippers claim she can see and hear everything that happens in the world through any plant. When she does manifest in corporeal form, she appears as a radiant, dark-skinned humanoid woman, wrapped in an aura of calm and compassion, clad in robes that glint with every color of the rainbow. Upon her brow is nestled an elegantly-tangled crown of blue hyacinths, dandelions, moss, and blue violets. She brings verdancy wherever she steps and to whatever she touches. Realm Mishakal's realm is within the Elysian Fields, a place of life and healing where she roams at her leisure, tending to all manner of ecosystems. It is a peaceful realm that doesn't concern itself with perfect order or freedom: all life here exists in ideal balance within its components. Her domain within this place, known as Healer's Home, is a shimmering golden dome in the middle of a great clearing, where she welcomes those who are lost in the Gardens. Personality As a powerful deity with such a large domain, Mishakal is often considered to embody various aspects, which may or may not be worshiped as separate deities entirely. The All-Mother To those who worship her, Mishakal the All-Mother is the most compassionate of beings in Astera. Representing the first half of the cycle of life- birth- all life is sacred to her, from insects and worms to the various mortal races that populate the world, and she is highly averse to killing as a solution for almost any problem. To those under her auspices, she is a kind and loving figure. She pushes her followers to acts of great selflessness and healing, and forgives even the most egregious wrongs committed by those who beseech her, so long as their contrition is sincere. Some worshipers of Pelor who uncover texts of Mishakal, particularly of her All-Mother aspect, often consider the two deities as one and the same- of course, depending on who is talking, either Pelor or Mishakal is taken to be the "true" name. The Raven Queen Where the All-Mother represents Mishakal's loving and nurturing side, her aspect of the Raven Queen represents the second half of the cycle of life- namely, death. Dedicated to preserving the natural cycles of life and death, she is an implacable enemy of those who toy with ending life, or extending it beyond its natural course. She despises necromancy in all of its forms and accepts no excuse for the raising of the dead. Worshipers Devotion to Mishakal was more widespread, at least in the continent of Daeraan, before the plague of Miserion. In the Era of Scars, worship of Mishakal has largely vanished in both the Broken Realm and Rukh Cai, remaining strong only in Davos through her enduring clergy, the Sisters of the Bough. Good-aligned fey creatures, connected as they are to the Goddess of Life, honor her by tending to the wild places of the world. In this instance, worshippers of Mishakal share common root with druids, though the relationship between the two groups has become lost over the centuries. Clergy So long as they have a care for life in their heart, Mishakal accepts clerics of any aligment- of course, for the most part, this precludes evil clerics from caring to worship her. This devotion becomes wholly present in the life of a cleric of Mishakal, as every action is encouraged to be considered in light of how it affects the balance of life and death that is the Goddess' domain. A few druids forego worship of Silvanus, instead offering themselves to the devotion of Mishakal. Like many of their ilk, they tend to actively intervene in the world, especially in wild nature, to preserve and protect life. Dogma Over the history of Astera, Mishakal has inspired her priests and clerics to act in the world along two guiding principles: * Guide and defend the cycle of life and death; * Offer healing and compassion to all life. These two tenets are very broad, reflecting the all-encompassing nature, and the wide embrace, of Mishakal in the world. In the Era of Scars, these two guiding principles have been further expanded upon. Mishakal is known in this time as one goddess with two aspects. The benign All-Mother is the great grovekeeper of the world, and clerics who devote themselves to this aspect of Mishakal typically take on the Vow of Life: * Nurture new life, wherever it springs, from the smallest insect to the multitudes of people in the world; * Seek out the sick, and heal them; seek out the hurt, and bind their wounds; seek out the hopeless, and give them hope; * Offer life and love to all, no matter who they are or what they've done. Mishakal loves even the unlovable. Her second aspect, the Raven Queen, is the guardian the other half of the cycle: death. Clerics who swear by Mishakal the Raven Queen are typically more grim and stoic, but are still looked upon with admiration. Along with the Vow of Life, they often take on the Vow of Death: * Bring rest to those whose time has come, and guide their souls to the veil; * Bring justice against those who would end life before its appointed time; * Bring proper death to beings brought back to unlife; * Bring knowledge and hope in times of death, that the cycle brings new life. Very few temples, if any at all, devote themselves only to the Raven Queen aspect of Mishakal. Most honor the All-Mother primarily, and a few others seek to balance out both aspects with one another, such as the Temple of the Bough in the Eastfarthing of Davos. Temples Mortals who build temples to Mishakal envision them as places of community and design them for the practical purposes of shelter, gathering-place, makeshift hospice, and meditative space. The temples of the Sisters of the Bough follow a common design that is typically centered around a large open-air plaza with plants freely growing up columns and along walls: the plaza has no seats, but does boast a large wooden altar where worship services are held. Several archways along the walls lead to a hospice, meditation grove, and sleeping quarters for priestesses. Fey creatures do not typically worship her in such formalized spaces, often simply keeping a shrine to her in their territories, decorated with a lei of flowers shaped like her holy symbol. Rites Not unlike druids, clerics of Mishakal ascribe special properties to certain natural substances, especially those derived from plants. However, these properties are believed manifest from channeling one's faith in the Goddess, and not completely inherent to the substance itself. Flowers and blossoms are closely associated with worship of Mishakal in Davos, and are used as objects, or to make balms, for many rituals involving new life or death. Newborn babies may be marked with, or bathed entirely in, a balm made with blue violets, blessing the child with the All-Mother's eternal faithfulness. On the other hand, those who are given funerary rites by priests of Mishakal are often interred with blue hyacinths, as a symbol of the Raven Queen's constance and guidance of the soul through the cycle. Many clerics who take on the task of guarding the world against the machinations of Orcus carry resin-soaked pine bark with them: burning this as incense is believed by some to help in warding away the undead and purifying places tainted with necromantic magic. History Many stories, myths and legends exist of Mishakal and her influence in the world. Birth Mishakal is said to be eternal by most priests devoted to her worship; that is, as long as Astera has existed, so too has she. Certain myths passed around in far-flung corners of the Broken Realm tell a different story: that she came into existence as the once-chaotic world was tamed and ordered by the God of Strength, Bahamut, the soul of the world itself made manifest in deific fashion. The Verdant Time All planes of existence of Astera, save for the Elemental Planes and the Chaos of Limbo, once coexisted with one another, and celestials walked the earth, actively influencing world events. To better cultivate the life in the world, Mishakal enmeshed the fabric of the Material Plane with that of the Edenic Gardens, creating an overlapping dimension that would act as a blueprint and scaffold for material Astera to follow: the Feywild. Eventually, the magical energies of this new plane gave rise to powerful creatures known as eladrin- the first fey beings- who would go on to act as grovekeepers of the world in her stead. This eon of history was known as the Verdant Time, where death worked with life in harmony, and all living beings existed in balance with one another. War with Orcus Not all beings were pleased with this, however. The demon lord Orcus, jealous of the power of Mishakal and hateful of the life that she begat, created a horrifying curse known as undeath, which would trap souls between life and death- and ensnare them into his service. Unleashing this curse into the world, Orcus sought to corrupt the Feywild, and thus the Material Plane, and bend them both to his will. Mishakal, and the eladrin, beat back the demon lord and his undead servants, but not before large parts of the Feywild were irrevocably corrupted. To prevent the taint of Orcus from reaching Astera itself, the Goddess separated the Feywild from the Material Plane fully, and excised its corrupted parts to cast them into a realm of their own: the Shadowfell. No longer were these planes confluent with the Material Plane, instead becoming parallel, yet fully-fledged planes in their own right. Category:Deities Category:Religions Category:Neutral good deities Category:Life domain deities Category:Nature domain deities Category:Death domain deities Category:Old Gods Category:Human deities Category:Elf deities Category:Halfling deities Category:Gnome deities